Professional experience program report : 1st January-30th June 1984 at Waikato University, Hamilton, New Zealand

The research I was involved in focussed on two main areas: the exploration of ideas that children hold about various topics (specifically temperature), and the classroom trialling of teacher material based on earlier research. The teacher material was later re-written. Generally, the children’s ideas followed earlier identified characteristics, in that they were founded in experience and were reasonable coherent explanations based on limited knowledge and experience. In their ideas about temperature, for example, the children tended to equate a temperature to heat, and were distracted by the volume of an object when estimating temperatures. Many children were uncertain about the range of temperature of objects in everyday experience, and were ignorant of boiling point and melting point temperatures. The classroom trials of materials revealed that teachers tend to interpret materials from their own educational philosophy, even if the philosophy in the materials is different from their own. The materials in the first trials not only failed to convey to the teachers the main differences in philosophy, but how to implement some of the more difficult aspects of the suggested strategy. The second trials showed that the suggested strategy is viable if used by teachers more familiar with the strategy and philosophy it is based on. The trials highlighted some practical and managerial problems in implementation, and the teachers’ attempts to overcome the problems. Modifications were made existing teacher materials, and new materials prepared reflected the information available from the earlier trials.